After many months of hard work, we can finally share the first Alfred v2 beta. As you’ve seen from the recent sneak peeks, there are huge improvements and some great new features, like workflows, that will make Alfred more powerful than ever before.

Rather than waffle on about v2, I’ll re-iterate a few things below then let Mega Supporters download the beta and have a play. :)

This is a beta release: While it has been tested and Andrew & I have been using it as our day-to-day Alfred version, you may still encounter unexpected behaviour or bugs. Some features may also change between now and the final release, so be flexible, especially when it comes to workflows.

To help us keep track of bug reports, please email us or join our forum, rather than tweeting us.

Beta is limited to Mega Supporters: To help us limit the volume of feedback for the beta, only Mega Supporters can take part at this time. If you have a single user license from v1, you can choose to upgrade to Mega Supporter to join the beta. If you prefer to wait until it’s fully tested, hold off until v2 goes to general release to upgrade to a v2 single user license. Questions about licensing? Have a look at the FAQ.

Keep version 1 handy: Some features are not yet complete in this beta; for example, there is no iTunes Mini Player yet. You can keep versions 1 & 2 running concurrently by choosing different hotkeys, and we don’t recommend deleting v1 just yet.

Over the coming weeks, we’ll be releasing new builds when they’re ready, will publishing documentation and help pages, and prepare for the general release.

Without further ado, Mega Supporters can download the beta here to get started. Once you’re up and running, come back and we’ll post some workflows you can import today!

It’ll be up to the extension developers to upgrade their extensions to take advantage of the v2 features. Some developers already reported last night that it took them just a minute to do it, so most extensions will be updated before v2 even goes to general release :)

It’s a conscious choice not to import v1 settings into v2 at this point, as we need users to test v2 as thoroughly as possible starting from a blank canvas. Closer to the v2 general release, we’ll allow exporting for themes, importing of settings from v1, syncing between your Macs and all that lovely stuff that comes once the features are settled for the long term :)

Personally I rather wait for the final release and the dev updates before upgrade. It’s not worth it if my whole life goes to hell once installed. literally My workflow relies entirely on Alfred so I’m scare if I need to start from scratch again in this point of my life that even my employees are using the same extensions. So, let’s see.

It’ll be before v2 goes to general availability, as this will need to be tested to some extent. To set your expectations, some features may not work fully, as Alfred relies on some newer APIs for some of them, but we always try to make it as backwards compatible as possible! :)

Workflow looks promising!
And it would be great if it has “open with alfred” option on ‘Launch Apps/ Files’ and ‘Open File’ actions. Then we can use it as a kind of short cut to the folder and start digging with alfred quickly.